The latest quarterly data from Kantar Worldpanel , including the Christmas trading period, showed that the discounters, Aldi and Lidl, continue to dramatically outperform their larger rivals in a virtually static grocery market, as they have done throughout 2014. At the top end, Waitrose continue to perform strongly despite the difficult market conditions.

Some recent news from some of the big names in the UK retail grocery sector included:

Despite the much publicised woes of many of the major retail brands, the large supermarket chains performed strongly in a recent survey, by online insurers, GoCompare. The results were based on customer perceptions of ‘trusted providers’ and the supermarkets came in third place, behind large ‘online’ and ‘clothing’ retailers. They came ahead of other providers such as building societies, broadband providers and banks – with energy providers and payday lenders filling the two bottom places in the GC league table.